CES 2014: Mobile Tops Agenda

LAS
VEGAS—While curved TV screens, Ultra High Definition
TV, evolving
display technologies and Internet-connected “smart” TVs
will generate buzz at
the 2014 International CES, the underlying context at the show will be the
integration of content into technology platforms, second-screen developments,
diverse interfaces and the role of cloud distribution.

The expected turnout (matching or exceeding last year’s 152,000) at
the event,
which runs Jan. 7–10, will have a chance to see
“better pixels” (as Dolby
calls its approach to new imaging technology), more autostereoscopic 3D and a
dollop of mobile DTV products. They’ll hear from Tom Wheeler,
in his first appearance at a major industry event since becoming Federal Communications
Commission Chairman,
the other four commissioners, the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission
and from the CEOs of Yahoo, Sony, Cisco and Intel. More than three dozen
conference tracks—some
with dozens of sessions—look into digital TV, broadband expansion,
music and
interactivity among hundreds of other topics.

As CES-goers navigate through the 1.92 million square feet of exhibits at the
Las Vegas Convention Center, Venetian Hotel and countless hospitality and
demonstration suites, they’ll see more than 3,200 vendors, ranging
from
electronics stalwarts to month-old start-ups, especially in the
“Eureka Park”
innovation pavilion.

CEA Integrates Social Media
Into
CESLAS
VEGAS —The
Consumer Electronics
Association will use a number of social media promotions in connection with the
2014 International CES event to assist show participants more easily navigate
exhibits, spot trends and connect with friends and business associates.

CEA has set up
a social media center, dubbed the “Social Media Vending
Machine” and will host
a “Social Hour” networking event as part of the event,
which takes place Jan.
7–10. The organization will also implement a “Social Media
Command Center”
which will be powered by FleishmanHillard’s “black
box,” an interactive,
portable, human-powered technology platform that integrates business
data—including traditional, digital and social
conversations—into real-time
insight dashboards and visualizations. This technology will be used to sift
through the voluminous amount of information generated on the Las Vegas
Convention Center show floor and elsewhere. Show attendees will then be able to
access a touchscreen dashboard located in the Convention Center’s
Grand Lobby
and containing information about conversational trends and conversation streams
at the show.

“With
such an
enormous amount of information generated before, during and after the 2014
International CES, it can be difficult to sift out the most
relevant—and
actionable—content and conversations,” said Darrell Jursa,
senior vice
president and partner of Global Emerging Media and Technology at
FleishmanHillard. “By essentially making big data small, the Social
Media
Command Center, powered by FleishmanHillard black box, aims to change the way
both attendees and non-attendees experience the energy, excitement and
innovation of the 2014 CES.”

In addition to this effort, Adobe will bring social data visualizations to the
CES keynote stage on Jan. 7 and 8 with graphic displays offering top social
conversations and trending topics.

The CES social hour networking event is set for 4-6 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 9
and will take place at the V Bar in Las Vegas’ Venetian Hotel. This
event is
structured to provide an opportunity for the CES social media community to
gather and meet face to face during the four day show.

The “Social Media Vending Machine” will be also located in
the Experience CEA
display in the Convention Center’s Grand Lobby. Show sponsors say
that
attendees who use the vending machine to issue a tweet with the official CES
hashtag (#CES2014) and Twitter handle (@IntlCES) will receive a CES-branded
t-shirt. And attendees who wear their t-shirts in the exhibition halls will
have the opportunity to win gift cards.

“We are excited to offer our attendees the opportunity to truly
become more
deeply immersed in the technology conversations taking place at the 2014
International CES,” said Karen Chupka, senior vice president of
International
CES and Corporate Business Strategy.

The 2014 CES will feature more than 3,200 exhibitors spotlighting the latest
consumer technology products and services across 15 product categories.
Additional information about the 2014 International CES is available at
CESweb.org.
—James O’Neal

“Streaming and mobile media plus the mass adoption of mobile and
tablet
devices” are atop the roster of trends that Karen Chupka, senior vice
president,
International CES and Corp. Business Strategy at the Consumer Electronics
Association, cites as attracting the greatest interest at the show. Chupka has
overseen the event, which is produced by CEA, for more than a decade.

“One of the areas we see growth is motion technology and sensors, and
how they
are enabling additional services,” Chupka said. She points to the new “TechZones” (pavilions
with a collection of
companies, often small, specialized ventures) that focus on these new
technologies, such as the “MotionTech” and “Wrist
Revolution” zones.

Those exhibit
sectors and dozens of others featuring fitness, health and personal
communications services subtly underscore a significant issue for
broadcasters.
Many of the services rely
on some sort of wireless bandwidth for connectivity, and although unlicensed
spectrum serves many purposes, the ever-increasing roster of connected devices
ultimately puts greater demands on, and potential interference for, legacy
operations such as broadcasting.

UHDTV AND MULTIPLATFORM DELIVERYUHDTV will be top of mind—and
ever-present—during the show.

“The Ultra HD market is on the rise with increased technology,
content and
consumer accessibility,” Chupka said, adding that she expects dozens
of vendors
to show “groundbreaking” UHD technologies now that
“more sets and content [are]
in the market.”

Among CES conference sessions dealing with UHD is one entitled
“Seeing is
Believing – 3D, 4K and UHD,” produced by the International
3D and Advanced
Imaging Society. The “Content and Disruptive Technology
Conference” will
include a session on “Ultra HD Content: What Will We Watch in 2014
and Beyond?”
Speakers include Chris Cookson, president, Sony Pictures Technologies; Tony
Werner, executive vice president and CTO, Comcast Cable; and Tom Cosgrove,
president and CEO, 3net Studios.

Sharp is
expected to showcase its 8K UHD
technology again, possibly joined by other companies to support Japanese
broadcaster NHK’s plans to use 8K technology at the 2016 Olympics in
Rio de
Janeiro.

For now, however, most manufacturers are focusing on 4K UHD, fearful of
curtailing a current product for 8K, which is still at least six to seven years
away from market rollout. For example, Sony Electronics President Phil Molyneux
recently hinted that his company’s 4K agenda—likely to be
shown at CES—will be
aimed at “the premium consumer.”

“It’s clear people will want to generate their own 4K
content,” Molyneux said
at a recent briefing. Although Sony has not pre-announced specific products,
Molyneux—who is stepping down as president of the company and will
take on an
advisory role effective Jan. 1—said his
goal is to drive down prices for TV sets and camcorders that can capture and
display 4K content.

OLED is also big at CES, although the industry is still awaiting a breakthrough
to bring down the price of the ultra-slim, high-resolution technology. In the
CES online “product search” database, typing the term
“OLED” generates more
than 800 CES exhibitors that have an OLED product. (Manufacturers are still
daunted by OLED production capabilities. By various estimates, the
“yield”—viable products from a production
run—still hovers below 50 percent,
thus making OLED screens very costly, especially in large formats.)

3D will also be on display, but with waning consumer enthusiasm, new 3DTV
introductions will be sparse or invisible.

Similarly, the Mobile DTV pavilion, which promoted the debut of mDTV during the
past few years, is not at CES this year, but emerging products for mobile video
reception will still be on the floor.
According to Daniel Bethlahmy, who works at NBCUniversal Content
Distribution on Dyle Mobile TV, AudioVox will show its MobileTV receiver, and
RCA/DST will exhibit a portable dual tuner TV tablet; both devices use Dyle
mobile TV technology.

Dolby Laboratories is showcasing several of its imaging technologies in private
suites just off the exhibit floors at both the Las Vegas Convention Center and
the Venetian Hotel. Its focus will be on Dolby’s expanding imaging
technologies,
including no-glasses 3D and its “better pixel” concept that
can deliver up to
4,000 nits of backlight from an LED panel.

CES Ups the Content Quotient
LAS
VEGAS—CEA
expects that the
contingent of entertainment content professionals and executives in Las Vegas
for the show will match or exceed last year’s 30,000.
That’s about 20 percent
of overall attendance, a huge group at a trade show that traditionally
concentrates on retailing of home and transportable reception devices.

“Entertainment
Matters,” a five-year-old program of conferences, executive tours and
other
events, is the centerpiece of the program that is intended to introduce
production and distribution (studio and network) executives to the hardware
opportunities at CES.
A related “Brand
Matters” program encompasses advertising/marketing issues. The
keynote
“Technology Innovators” session for that program features
top executives from
Twitter and Facebook.

CES’
mix of
keynote addresses, SuperSessions and more than three dozen conference tracks
offer a larger-than-ever agenda of corporate bravura, analytic insights and
competitive positioning.

The IEEE Consumer Electronics Society is running its 32nd IEEE technical
program piggybacked to CES. The agenda includes state-of-art-technology
tutorials and more than 300 technical presentations from experts at companies,
research laboratories and universities.

The Second Screen Summit will focus on trends in mobile viewing. Its organizers
raise the promotional question, “Has the 2nd Screen Become the 1st
Screen?”
Other topics at the Monday conference include monetization, advertising and
apps that affect broadcasters and brands.

The “StoryTech Impact!” conference will explore the five
“most relevant trends”
in technology and match it against audience and consumer trends. Among the events
in this conference track is
a session called “Changing Channels: Content Disruption, Bundling and
the
‘Plussing’ of Services,” which will focus on
generational experiences in
cord-cutting, OTT usage and the shifting content ecosystem.

The Interactive TV Alliance is hosting a breakfast meeting on Tuesday to
examine the revamped TV landscape.

—Gary Arlen

Cross-platform and multiplatform delivery—including cloud
TV—is also high on
the CES roster. ActiveVideo will introduce its CloudTV
“AdCast” Software as a
Service, which delivers targeted and
interactive TV advertisements to any device for pay-TV providers,
online
video providers and the CE industry.

Dish, which recently closed its Blockbuster retail video subsidiary, will push
ahead into digital distribution, including enhancements to its Hopper
platform.
The company says it will
enable “more consumption and viewing.”

Orca Systems will demonstrate what it calls the “first multistandard
TV
receiver chip,” intended for “TV-Anywhere”
applications in tablets. The
CMOS-based single chip, which receives over-the-air broadcasts, includes a
hybrid TV tuner with a software-configurable demodulator and would support
NTSC, PAL and SECAM and digital ATSC, QAM, DVB-T/C, DTMB and ISDB-T.

NIRVANA FOR POLICY NERDSFor policy
wonks, CES’s agenda touches hotspots beyond the spectrum
smackdown.
FCC Chairman Wheeler’s Wednesday afternoon
on-stage conversation with CEA President Gary Shapiro will provide a glimpse of
the new top regulator’s agenda. Other sessions about airwave
allocation include
“Spectrum Spectacular: Slicing the Nation’s Airwaves, which
features officials
from Google, the FCC and other organizations.

Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker will participate in the
“Innovation:
Keeping America Open for Business” Supersession. As with Wheeler, the
format
will be one-on-one conversation with CEA’s Shapiro on Wednesday
morning.

CEA’s promotional passion for innovation and its battles in the
patent and
copyright realm appear during several panels. A session about “The
Internet of
Things and the Home of the Future” will be introduced by Federal
Trade
Commission Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen. “Patent Litigation Reform:
Who Are
You Calling a Troll?” will offer a faceoff between Erich Spangenberg,
CEO and
co-chairman of IPNav (one of the largest “patent assertion entities”)
versus
advocates for patent reform.

Other policy sessions will look at “Energy Efficiency Initiatives for
Electronics,” the use of electronics devices on airplanes plus
several panels
on energy, e-waste and “Green” standards.

AWARDS GALORE
More than 20 specialty awards programs and events will be
featured at CES,
including the CEA MoDev Hackathon and Last Gadget Standing.

The National
Academy of Television Arts and Sciences will present its 65th annual Technology
and Engineering Achievement Emmy Awards on Thursday evening. The recipients
have already been announced, including Sony, SMPTE and Yamashita Engineering
Manufacture Inc. (For-A) for “Development, Standardization And
Productization
of The High Definition Serial Digital Interface;” John Hey of Adobe,
Netflix,
TiVo, YouTube (Google) and Amazon for “Personalized Recommendation
Engines For
Video Discovery;” and GoPro for “Inexpensive Small Rugged
HD Camcorders.” There
are also awards for gesture-control systems, network DVRs and VOD ad insertion.

Variety
magazine will host the “Breakthrough of the Year” Awards
Jan. 9, recognizing
achievements in technology, social media, film and television, sports, music
and social media, among other categories.

UP Global Live will showcase entrepreneurs, investors, media and companies
taking part in the Eureka Park exhibit area.

A NEW LOOKIn addition to all the show floor innovation, CES itself will
“look
different,” Chupka said. A new
contractor has been hired to revamp the layout and design of the show floor,
signage and other features.

“This will help people find their way,” Chupka said.
“It a cleaner design,
clearer looks. We want to make it easier for people to find the exhibits they
want and to enjoy the show.”